I've suggested (& published in 18 journal papers) a new theory called quantised inertia (or MiHsC) that assumes that inertia is caused by relativistic horizons damping quantum fields. It predicts galaxy rotation, cosmic acceleration & the emdrive without any dark stuff or adjustment.My Plymouth University webpage is here, I've written a book called Physics from the Edge and I'm on twitter as @memcculloch

Wednesday, 31 May 2017

Opinion on the UK Election

Apologies, but I cannot help but write something about the election since I am excited by the possibility that Jeremy Corbyn might get into No. 10. There has been since 1979 a huge increase in inequality in the UK. The Gini coeffient that measures inequality has risen from 0.23 in 1979 (the value egalitarian Norway now has) to about 0.4 now (close to the US) and the UK has become a less kind country with more homeless and foodbanks, where assets that everybody used to own collectively (Royal Mail, NHS) are being sold to the rich.

The only solution is to put someone in No. 10 who will listen to ordinary people and not corporations, and will not sell out. In its empirical wisdom, that is what the British democratic system has produced in the form of Jeremy Corbyn, who has stood by his present democratic socialist views consistently for 40 years.

It is very important in my view that, as Labour now propose, the essentials of life: NHS, railways, utilities, post office are owned in common, as they were after WW2. If not, the processes of the game of monopoly take over, capital concentrates in a few hands, and we will all be dependent on the super-rich for the essentials, and they'll raise the price to the maximum. It is also essential to avoid burdening students with debt, so when they graduate they can chose to work on their dreams, rather than aim to get rich quick to pay off their debt. Labour promise to end tuition fees. This, and the increased equality, should produce a more fulfilled and creative society. Hopefully also the general atmosphere will become less money-driven: for example it is also important that scientists are not judged on the amount of funding they bring in, so they will make decisions based on what is scientifically interesting rather than what brings in easy funding (eg: safe topics or expensive equipment).

President Roosevelt's 1944 GI Bill in the US (free college) and the 1948 Labour victory in the UK when the NHS and welfare state were formed, produced a secure and well-educated generation and it is interesting that the GI Bill in the US was followed by its so-called 'greatest generation' (Moon landings, Dylan, Woodward & Bernstein). In contrast high inequality makes a nation weak since the poor become too poor to create, and the rich hide their money away so the economy shrinks. This is why over the millennia there has been a slow tendency away from rule by the rich (the Tory way) and towards democracy and socialism (Labour). Compare for example Ancient Egypt with modern states.

Two of my favourite parts of Star Trek are in The Voyage Home when Dr McCoy goes from the 23rd century back to the 20th Century and regrows a woman's kidney saying "Kidney dialysis? My God, what is this, the dark ages?", and in First Contact when Picard says there is no money in the future. The future can be better, but more advanced technology is not enough. The social system also needs to advance. Electing Corbyn would be a great step towards that. Please vote Labour.

9 comments:

Socialism is often misunderstood as being the "Hand-Out State" but really it's a Hand-Up that ultimately enriches everyone. Money that merely recirculates amongst the already wealthy is more of a stagnant pool than the circulatory system it should be in any properly functioning economy.

Hi MikeSlightly off-topic for this post, but not this blog. I was pondering if the 'Unruh Pressure' that you described as the partial cause of the anomalous proton radius seen in muonium experiments, might not be used to explain the binding of the partons in the proton itself. I assumed the forces to be involved were the electrostatic repulsion of the partons, the centripetal force needed to keep the partons in orbit, and the 'Unruh Pressure' caused by mutual shading by the partons. After some dubious messing about with cubic functions, I computed that the orbital radius required was a bit over ~1E-19 metres, thus much too small. Thought you might want to know. Seems I need another force in there after all. A preprint I saw the other day suggested that 'strong gravity' could be an alternative to plain old QCD, so that might lead somewhere...

qraal: Just the sort of calculated prediction I enjoy! Have you considered that the partons emit gluon radiation? There is also likely to be Lorentz contraction, that I did not need to consider for slower muons, which may alter the geometry.

Hi Mike,I was doing more of an order of magnitude thing and I ignored the gluons for the time being, since I was thinking maybe the EM Vacuum pressure would replace/emulate the colour force in the right conditions. Thus lots of simplifying assumptions involved. One question about the forces involved though was exactly what happens to Unruh radiation when the acceleration is centripetal in relativistic conditions. There's a paper on how the CMB is distorted for planets in extremal orbits around Kerr-Newman black-holes that might be relevant.

Well, YouGov and Survation polling predicted it to a certain extent. YouGov predicted the Tories to get 302 seats, Labour 269. Not far off. The media didn't predict it but, apart from the Guardian & and few others, they seem to be in an parallel cosmos.